


moondust

by wrtchedwolf



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher - Fandom, kastle - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Angst with a sad ending, Canon Divergence, F/M, Frank is sad, Post-Daredevil S2, Very Canon Divergent, frank and micro are the best of friends of course, frank goes to micro for shitty advice, frank is growing a beard, frank is pining again, he wants to keep karen safe, oh look a song fic, pre-punisher s1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 16:33:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13035087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrtchedwolf/pseuds/wrtchedwolf
Summary: "i love her, and it was my own choice that made me lose her."all frank wanted was to see her. just one time, to be reminded of why he buried himself.for her.a short story.





	moondust

frank castle woke up in a cold sweat, heart nearly breaking through his chest with its vicious beating as he awoke from his nightmare. there was nobody around to hear his cries as he reached over to the other side of the bed, where nothing but cold sheets greeted him. it came as a shock, and he felt around as if he could find someone, until he remembered that there was nobody there. he was alone in the room.

droplets of sweat mixed with the dried blood on his face before falling down, leaving a streak of red in their wake. it dripped into his left eye, blurring his vision and mixing with the unshed tears welling up in the wake of his bad dream. his memory, or whatever twisted version his mind had given him this time.

_it must've been the early hours of the morning, judging by the fact that the sun was not yet strong enough to break through the curtains that held it at bay, coating the master bedroom in a soft blue light._

_the autumn air nipped at the exposed skin of his chest that laid just above the white comforter that covered the rest of his body. he was turned on his left side, but moved to a more comfortable position on his back._

_that was when he noticed the warmth beside him, the ultimate tell-tale sign of another life, living and breathing beside him. frank held his breath, regretting the single moment in which he wished for karen, a bright and intelligent woman that wasn't his. he damned himself, because then he thought of his wife. and he loved her, the woman who had bore him two children and endured the long months he had spent across the world, at war, hoping he would come home to her._

_he always did. he always came home to her, because she was his home, and he didn't feel truly at peace anywhere else. the moments he spent with his son and his daughter and his wife, those were the moments he cherished above all others._

_and then he remembered that she was dead, and he closed his eyes as hard as he could, hoping he would never have to open them and find her lying dead beside him because maybe he was imagining the warm, feminine body sleeping soundly next to him. this body, it was not full of life. it was cold, and it was dead. it had been so for a year, even more than that now._

_but this body was not lifeless. the woman stirred, shifting under the covers and folding herself into his side, a leg sliding over his body so her knee was resting against his thigh. it was when she wrapped an arm around him, too, that he realized she was nearly naked. there was no shirt, no pajama bottoms._

_he dared to lift his eyelids in the slightest, a blurry form appearing in front of his eyes as he looked down at her. what he expected to be brown hair was blonde, her pallid skin contrasting with the tan of his own. she was so tiny compared to him, too, and his heart melted at the sight of her. at his karen._

_"i know you're awake," the pretty blonde mumbled against his torso, lips brushing so softly against him that it created goosebumps along his arms. "you can open your eyes, frank."_

_she lifted her head as he did so, her striking blue eyes sleepy in the morning haze. he smiled, and it wasn't a bullshit half-smile, either, but a full-blown grin, teeth peeking through. there was so much light in her eyes for five in the morning, so much love in his heart._

_"there you are, sleepyhead," she said with a lazy smile, fingers reaching for his face so she could cup his cheeks, bringing him close to her. his lips immediately parted, the action so familiar he hadn't realized he was doing it until her lips fit between his, kissing him slowly and deeply._

_it sent a fire through his bones, setting his body alight. his hands went to caress her neck and hold her head to his, pulling her as close as he could get her._

_when they finally pulled apart, he pressed a quick kiss to her nose that emitted a soft laugh from her._

_"i love you, frank," karen said, a leg on either side of him so she was fully on his lap now. "i love you always. to the moon."_

_he smiled softly, tucking a stray hair behind her ear. "and beyond," he finished._

_he opened his mouth to tell her how beautiful she looked in this light, and how beautiful she looked always, when a man clad in military uniform and a black mask came upon her, and everything slowed down while going too fast at the same time._

_his words contorted themselves into a broken scream, yelling "please" as he held a black pistol to her head and blew her brains out, right in front of him, and he couldn't do anything but watch._

it felt like frank was screaming, but his mouth was closed, and his throat was empty. everything in his dream was so twisted from his memory and somehow it hurt more than it had the night before.

his entire body was shaking with the pain and the grief. he would never admit weakness to anybody, but everyone was gone now and he loved her.

"god _damn_ it," he cursed. he loved her.

he loved her.

he loved her.

he loved her, and there would be no more chances to tell her. he wanted her to know, that there was somebody out there who loved her with an intensity brighter than the largest, hottest sun. he loved her with every breath he took, with the words he couldn't find to make them fit and make sense of what he felt for her. it was like a painting, halfway there but forever unfinished. his love was a burning ache behind his ribcage that spread to every vein and artery in his body until everything was on fire and he loved her. he loved her, and it would forever be too late.

he could hear her voice flicker in and out of his ears like a bad signal on a radio station. he could see the way his name formed upon her lips, hear it whispered into his ear. he couldn't get it out of his head. he was the record player, and she was the broken record.

he never stopped replaying the memories of her in his head, because he would never even come close to having her like that ever again.

-

ten months after his death, frank sat in the crook of a grey building along a busy street, hiding his face as best he could from the people passing by. he knew nobody would recognize him, with his hat under his hoodie pushing down his now-long hair and lengthy dark beard. there was that, and there was the fact that everybody had forgotten about the man who had once terrorized the streets of new york.

in the months following the bombing that supposedly marked his death, the people of new york had slowly forgotten that the punisher had even existed. he was a man who didn't seem real anymore, with all of the things he had done. the deaths he had willingly caused. frank castle was dead, and nobody remembered his name.

that was a good thing, that was what he wanted. if everyone forgot about him, then everyone forgot about the brave, fiery karen page, too, and the way she so fiercely defended him both in court and in the new york bulletin. nobody would be coming after her anymore.

she was finally safe.

 _"blacksmith already tried to get me once,"_ her voice echoed in his ear, _"i really don't want to give him a second chance."_

_"he's not gonna get it."_

he had wrapped a blue blanket around himself, blocking out the cold that was slowly seeping into the air with the coming winter. to the common person, he looked homeless. and it's not that he wasn't, because he was. just not in the physical sense.

the sun was going down, casting a shadow over the street. he had been sitting there for a while, reluctant to leave. he knew her shift had ended already, but he was outside of her building and she hadn't arrived yet. he wanted to wait for her, his heart wanted to wait for her, but he had hurt himself enough. he was going to get up and leave, but–

 _just a few more minutes_ , he told himself.

he huddled against the concrete building, thinking back to a conversation he once had, his eyes on the sidewalk even as his mind drifted elsewhere. to a diner somewhere else in the city.

_karen sat across from him, head shaking briefly._

_"i don't like what you do, and ultimately i think you probably belong in jail," she started with a slight shake of her head," but you... you're honest."_

_her eyes finally flickered to his, not lasting longer than a brief flash. "you never lie to me."_

_"does he?" frank inquired then. she looked at him as if she were cautious, not out of fear but in not knowing his hidden motive for bringing her there. his face was partially hidden by a black ball cap, the rest of his bruised, battered face on display._

_she shook her head, "no."_

_"come on," he replied with a narrow of his eyes, hands sitting on top of one another as he rested his elbows on the table. "let's not do that."_

_and they get into it, the topic of her and the lawyer creating a tense but not necessarily uncomfortable atmosphere._

_"look i might generally be considered out of my skull and this might not mean much but this could be the craziest, most batshit thing i've ever heard in my life. people, they can hurt you. the ones that can really hurt you are the ones close enough to do it."_

_he looked at her, and he felt vulnerable, no matter the fact that they had just been talking about matt murdock. now, the red devil was out of mind and all he could focus on was her and the hurricane of bad feelings that was raging inside of him._

_"people that get inside you a-and-and tear you apart, make you feel like you're never gonna recover shit," he'd scoffed, "i would chop my arm off right here in this restaurant just to feel that one more time from my wife. my old lady, she'd break my heart, she... she'd rip it out, she'd tear it apart, she'd step on that shit, feed it to a dog i mean, she was ruthless she brought the pain."_

_he looked her in the eye right then, everything going out of focus save the woman in front of him who was staring so intently at him he felt naked. laid open for her to see, not physically but mentally. emotionally._

_"she'll never do that again. you see, i'll never feel that," he felt numb, as if for a moment that hurricane had paused its reckoning to let the pain sink deep within his bones. "you sit here and you're all confused about this thing but you have it, you have everything. so hold onto it, use two hands and never let go, you got it?"_

frank had left her speechless then, shocked and confused and a whirlwind of things he couldn't possibly understand because he didn't know her all that well, but now... now he almost wished he still didn't. his heart ached every time he thought of her. every move, every word, they all said something about what she was thinking and what she was feeling. he knew all of it. he knew her.

he was possibly the only person who truly knew her.

karen was extremely brave, strong, fierce—but she was also beyond compassionate, kind, caring. she believed that she deserved bad things because she'd done bad things in the past, believed she couldn't be saved. yet, she thought everyone else could. for god's sake, she thought he could be saved, the violently ruthless punisher. she was not wholly good, nobody was, but she was the closest thing to it.

frank waited an hour longer than he told himself he would before he left, deciding he should go before whatever self-dignity remained was gone, too.


End file.
